Introduction ... What is an Egg Coddler?

An egg coddler is a porcelain or pottery cup with a lid that is used
to prepare a dish called, appropriately enough, coddled eggs.
Coddled eggs are very much like poached eggs, except that the egg is
cooked inside the coddler. The egg(s) are broken into the buttered coddler,
and seasonings are added, if desired. The coddler is then closed with
the lid and partially immersed in boiling water for a few minutes.
When the eggs are cooked to the desired firmness, the coddler is
lifted from the boiling water, the lid removed, and breakfast is
served, in a lovely decorated dish.
We've provided some egg coddler recipes here.

Egg coddlers are often painted or glazed with a design. There are
many different patterns and designs, which makes them highly suitable
as practical gifts for the kitchen, or for addition to the china collection.
Egg coddlers are also very desirable as collectibles. The example to
the left here was manufactured and sold by
Royal Worcester (RW). The pattern of this particular coddler is
called
June Garland.
RW claims to have invented the egg coddler in the late Nineteenth
Century and continues to manufacture them to this day.

Egg coddlers have a lid, made out of metal, or porcelain, that is
attached to the top of the coddler before cooking. Many coddlers are
manufactured with a set of screw-on threads at the lip of the
coddler. The threads on the coddler are often either a metal, such as
stainless steel, or a plastic, such as white nylon. The lid will
have a complementary screw thread that holds it to the coddler during
cooking. In some examples, neither the lid nor the coddler are
threaded, and instead the lid is attached by a metal strap across the
top that hooks onto "ears" on the side of the coddler.

In some cases, the lid has no lifting ring at all.
Syracuse,
manufacturer of the
Premier Egg Coddler
around the turn of the century, made coddlers with metal lids and no
lifting ring. This example to the left has a porcelain lid with screw
threads, and the threads at the top of the coddler are also porcelain.
We suspect that this example shown may have been manufactured by
Franz Josef Mayer,
but we're not sure.

Related Objects Not Covered by This Site

There are other collectible objects out there that are sometimes
described in auctions as egg coddlers. What's in a name? Well,
without getting into a philosophical discussion of linguistics
... nothing. However, for the purpose of this site, we will exclude
any number of objects that are often described as egg coddlers.

Purists may call these other objects egg caddies, egg cups, egg warmers,
or egg servers instead of egg coddlers. Quite frankly, I don't
believe it's necessary to be so pedantic. These objects were all
designed to handle eggs ... to cook them or present them for
consumption. We can consider them all to be "close personal friends"
and/or "distant relatives" of the egg coddlers that we study and
discuss here on this site.

This is an egg cup, normally used to serve soft-boiled eggs to
the table. There are many collectors that are interested in
egg cups, and indeed, there is a much greater variety of egg
cups to collect than egg coddlers. However, this site will
stick to egg coddlers. This example here is by Herend with
the Blue Garland pattern.

For additional information on egg cups we recommend the following
sites:

These objects closely resemble the egg coddlers that we study
on the site. However, we've learned that they are Japanese
tea cups with lids. They are beautifully decorated, and are
probably highly desirable collectibles. However, egg
coddlers, they are not.

We can call this an egg caddy, or an egg server. It was
probably used to serve hard-boiled eggs to the table.

This lovely device is a reproduction of an early design. I
believe that you could prepare soft-boiled eggs, place them in
cups in the kitchen, then carry them all out together to a
dining area and serve each person individually their own egg
cup and egg. These items are available today at
www.finestreproductions.com.

These turn up on eBay occasionally, listed as "Turn of the
Century" pieces. This one was made by JDES.

We can call this an egg cooker, or an egg caddy, or an egg
warmer ... this one is truly an antique and I've seen similar
objects in museums ... sometimes labelled as an egg coddler.

This copper thing looks like an industrial-strength egg-cooker,
or perhaps, an egg-coddler coddler (each of the little cups
might be considered an egg-coddler in some respects). There is a
built-in electrical heating element, and the central compartment
could be filled with water, or perhaps it was used for something
else. Made by
Peter Gray and Sons of Boston.

Modern technology run amuck! These little plastic cups were
designed so that you can fix up something like coddled eggs in
the microwave oven. The results, theoretically, could be very
similar to coddling eggs. I'm sure that the inspiration for
the shape comes from egg coddlers. However, calling these egg
coddlers would be pushing the envelope a bit too much. These
and similar products are available in the 2000's.